


Baby-sitters' Hideout in Hawkins (Super Mystery #11)

by entwashian



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin, Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-24 05:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17698880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entwashian/pseuds/entwashian
Summary: Claudia takes a look at Will's artwork.





	Baby-sitters' Hideout in Hawkins (Super Mystery #11)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isquinnabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isquinnabel/gifts).



“So, this -- Mindflayer?” Claudia asked, continuing on when she saw Will nod, “it's gone, but the visions you had while it was inside your head are still there?”

Will nodded again, his fingers plucking at the covering of his bed. Claudia sat cross-legged on the floor, with a dozen of Will's drawings spread out around her. The bedroom door was left open, at his mother's insistence. 

“The visions are really more like memories,” Will tried to explain. “What he saw, _I_ saw.” He gestured at the drawings. “I thought that maybe I could get the images out of my head if I got them down on paper.” He pointed the toe of his shoe at the two drawings closest to him, which both depicted the same insectoid shape looming above the horizon, its long legs spiking downward into the earth like sharp blades. “It hasn't really worked so far,” Will said sheepishly. The figure appeared in 2 more of the drawings spread out on the floor. 

Claudia frowned. “There is _something_ about these pictures,” she said. “Give me a minute.” As she thought about it, Claudia rubbed absently at the earring dangling from her right ear -- a tiny ear of corn, to match the pat of butter dangling from her left. Her thoughts began to drift, and she mused that with the wizards and spaceships she'd seen in Will's other drawings on the way into his room, maybe her dragon earrings would have made a bigger impact. 

Her eyes widened. “A clue!” 

“What clue?”

Claudia jumped to her feet. She pulled a drawing of a wizard manipulating the stars off the wall to which it had been taped. “This is _your_ drawing, _your_ vision. It has your own point of view. **Those** \--” she pointed at the drawings on the floor “--those are _his_. The Mindflayer's.”

“Okay." It was Will's turn to think for a moment. "So, you're saying that my brain keeps spitting these images back out at me because it knows they don't belong to me?” 

“Maybe that's why drawing them doesn't help,” Claudia said. “Because you keep looking at it from his point of view. What's _your_ point of view about these things?” 

Will shrugged. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"These all look really creepy." Claudia swept up all the papers onto the floor into one messy pile. "But what if they didn't have to?" Claudia looked around the room for supplies. She found pale blue construction paper, a salmon colored crayon, and a 3 Musketeers bar. "Look."

Fueled by chocolate, she proceeded to draw a jack o'lantern: curly stem, triangle eyes, menacing gap-toothed grin. But with the pastel coloring she had chosen for her portrait, it didn't look nearly as frightening. She held it up for Will to see, and his eyes lit up with understanding.

"I'll give it a shot." He chose a sunshine-yellow sheet of paper, and then selected an orange crayon. He drew the now-familiar scene again, an insectoid body looming over the city, but this time he filled in the figure with strokes of bright orange wax.

In the end, the appendages that had looked so knifelike in WIll's other drawings appeared knobby, brittle, and... oddly cheesy. 

Claudia's stomach growled. "I could really go for some Cheetos," she said.

Will studied his latest drawing, which was both the same as and yet different from all the others. "Me, too," he said.


End file.
